Now that we know the details of the NBA's 22-team plan to resume the 2019-20 season in Orlando, Florida, what do they mean?
On Friday, I broke down the winners and losers of the restart plan based on the broad outline we knew then -- 22 teams, additional regular-season games and play-in tournaments for both conferences. Now sources tell ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski that teams will play eight additional games each, and the play-in tournaments will involve only the eighth and ninth seeds so long as the team in ninth is within four games of eighth.
Will this lead to surprises and upsets? How likely are play-in tournaments? And what do we still not know? Let's take a look.
Interpreting the details
One of the lingering questions about restarting with 22 teams rather than 20 -- including the four Western Conference teams that start within the four-game margin required for a play-in tournament -- is how the NBA settled on that number.
It seems clear that the league wanted to bring as many teams as possible to Orlando while giving them all a realistic path to the playoffs. Short of an extended play-in tournament that would have taken weeks to complete, there wasn't a path for teams like the Golden State Warriors that are far out of playoff contention. (The Warriors stood 17 games back of the Memphis Grizzlies for eighth in the West when the season was postponed.)
By contrast, it's at least plausible for the Phoenix Suns and Washington Wizards -- the two additional teams among the 22 -- to make an unlikely run. Washington, the only invited team outside the playoffs in the East, is 5½ games back of the Orlando Magic and would have to win at least two more games than either Orlando or the seventh-place Brooklyn Nets to force a play-in tournament in the East.
Although Phoenix is only a half-game further back of eighth than the Wizards, the Suns face a much tougher task. Not only do they have to gain at least two games on Memphis to force a playoff, they also have to be at least three wins better than all four other teams in contention for the West play-in: the New Orleans Pelicans, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings and San Antonio Spurs.
Chances of play-in tournament?
As innovative and experimental as a play-in tournament for eighth seems on paper, it's entirely possible we might not end up seeing one in either conference if the Grizzlies go on a hot streak over the remaining eight games of the regular season. To advance to the playoffs without a play-in tournament, they'd have to win one more game over the remaining eight than the best of the four teams directly behind them in the standings.
Without knowing the schedules for teams in Orlando -- how those will be determined is another important remaining question for the NBA to answer -- it's impossible to model the exact odds of a play-in tournament, and even then we'll have to deal with uncertainty about how teams will perform after an extended layoff and with potentially healthier rosters.
(For example, Portland's planned starting frontcourt of Zach Collins and Jusuf Nurkic has yet to play together this season because Nurkic has missed the entire regular season to date, and Collins played just three games before undergoing shoulder surgery.)
Still, we can use simulation to estimate the chances. Based on a report from Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo! Sports that teams' upcoming schedules -- minus games against teams whose seasons are over -- will be used as a baseline, I put together a potential schedule that adds three newly scheduled games (the Blazers vs. the Los Angeles Lakers and Miami Heat, and the Lakers vs. the Magic) to get to eight each.
I then used teams' ratings in ESPN's Basketball Power Index to estimate their chances of winning those games and simulated the season 500 times. In the East, that rarely resulted in Washington pulling within four games of eighth, just 10% of the time. Those matchups were split relatively evenly against the Magic and Nets.
Out West, a play-in tournament is far more likely both because Memphis has to win more games than all its competitors to avoid playing for their spot and because there are so many teams in the mix. Additionally, BPI rates the Grizzlies by a small margin the weakest of the six teams in contention in the West.
As a result, more than 90% of simulations showed a play-in tournament in the West, with Memphis involved in the overwhelming majority of them and maintaining the eighth seed nearly 75% of the time. While it's unlikely the Suns can make up enough ground to finish ninth (they did so just once in 500 simulations), the other four teams in the mix all appeared in the play-in tournament at least 14% of the time, with New Orleans the most frequent participant at 37% of simulations.
MORE: The Lowe Post podcast on the 22-team format
How might play-in tournaments work?
The play-in tournaments the NBA decided on for this season -- involving just two teams -- are different from the proposed play-in tournaments the league reportedly considered adopting for the 2021-22 season before the shutdown, which involved both the seventh and eighth seeds and multiple non-playoff teams.
In part, that probably changed because the league can no longer offer home-court advantage as a benefit to the teams that would have advanced directly to the playoffs under the traditional model, necessitating a novel format where the ninth seed will have to beat the eighth seed twice to advance, while the eighth seed can end the series by winning once -- meaning a maximum of two games. That's a much bigger advantage than simply playing at home.
Certainly, the Grizzlies and Magic are losers in this restart as compared to one where simply the 16 current playoff teams traveled to Orlando, but the NBA has also given them a big edge on the non-playoff teams competing for a spot.
Given that we don't know which teams would be involved, let's assume that the teams are equivalent in strength going into a potential play-in tournament. In that case, Memphis and Orlando, if they are the eighth seeds, would both be 75% likely to advance.
But if there are two play-in tournaments, the chances of an upset where at least one or both ninth seeds advance to the playoffs are about 44%. Not quite a coin flip but enough to create the excitement and suspense NBA fans hope for.